


The Line Between

by basicallymonsters



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 Phan, 2012 Phan, Coming of Age, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, feelings dump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basicallymonsters/pseuds/basicallymonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan has always been an expert at wanting things, and Phil is at the top of his list. <br/>A look at the complexity of love and infatuation and the ways that they have both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Line Between

He says I love you and he doesn't mean it, folding pretty words between layer cake ideas of what they should be, sweet and powdery and tasting of air.

His heart doesn't know enough about him to be heavy and rich with it. 

His heart doesn't know enough, period. 

Dan always has been a clinger, and he knows a lot about want, wraps himself in it like luxurious mink, holds on to the things and people he wants until they hold him back. He's intimate with want - most teenagers are - and he's basically familiar with love and what it would mean to fall into it. But he's 18.

Love looks like the tail end of a relationship built with shitty hipster movie cutouts and even shittier reality - falling out of love like nothing, like finishing a can of pop and feeling the last burn shock through you. Love tastes like infatuation, thick and pink and burnt out. 

Love and maturity don't cross paths for Dan - all love is good until it isn't. Ups and downs are for the unhealthy - she tells him this on their second anniversary, and he's all white button up and ironic wrist bands and they're sharing a grape lollipop and smiling bright and oblivious.

They break up a year later and Dan feels hollowed out. He tries to fill his chest with their music and ticket stubs, tries to find love in his memories of her and comes up empty handed. Or mostly - there are soft hands and cut classes and sharing headphones - that cling to his hands like sand.

Then there's Phil, whom he wants. He wants him from afar and then so close up his head spins. 

They talk about love in a detached sort of way, Phil chronicling unsuccessful week long romances in a voice too loud for 3 AM, gushing about his interests with the same fervency, speaking strongly and adoringly about his family. Dan talks back, and he sometimes feels like he's pitching his love to a crowd, selling memories to be more crucial than they are, painting valentine pictures so he seems older, maybe. More experienced. 

He is in want with Phil, and this is where he lies, a little, offering his heart with a little more mileage than it really has.

Turns out Phil doesn't care, nor is he fooled. He listens, and smiles and lets him get away with pretty flirtation, but he doesn't move forward, hyper aware of age and the ways Dan could leave.

So Dan tells him he loves him, velvet smooth and off hand, believing in their surface level attraction and friendship like it is gospel, like Skype is his temple. His heart twinges with the same infatuation he used to be drowning in - every time Phil's tongue peeks out from his teeth when he laughs, every time another similarity is thrown onto the towering pile they share, every time Phil makes a joke that is too funny to be real, silly and sly and easy.

They're not in love, and Phil never pretends to think so, never answers properly when Dan says it, boldfaced and earnest. He says "you too" and "I wish you were here" and sidesteps Dan's crush like he's a professional. 

When they meet it is another story. Not immediately or perfectly, but Dan fits unexpectedly into his life, so much so that Phil finds himself tripping over Dan stories at the dinner table, pinning polaroids to his cork board and itching for more contact. 

He was so close to Dan's feelings that he caught them like a cold, somewhere in between their first kiss in his bed, humid and tumbling headfirst into sex that he barely had the will-power to stop - and their first argument, Dan startlingly articulate and in his face and cold to balance out their usual heat.

They were easy together but hard for everyone else, relationship unfalteringly and thoroughly good, but audience watching them, parents wondering and waiting for explanations, coming out becoming a big production, tacked on the end of every introduction. 

It usually went - 

"This is Phil, my - we're - um. Together."

"Oh. Oh! I didn't know you were gay."

"I'm not."

"So you're…"

"Bi."

"Well isn't that… alternative!"

\- or something much nastier that they didn't dwell on or stay around, choosing select secret keepers as their social group, walking the line between friends and lovers with increasing proficiency. 

Dan starts to grow up, despite his best efforts, and his chest starts to feel tight and battered when he looks at Phil in public and his hand twitches away from his. His feelings are less passionate and buoyant and fast and more intricate and unsure. His parents ask him where he's going on weekends and he feeds them half truths, lying for want becoming something darker and less fun.

He feels something like heartbreak on the horizon.

He and Phil become closer than he thought was possible in the meantime, and every part of his life is blooming and lush. A part of him feels like when he picks the fruit of their shared gain it tastes like ashes. It tastes like the dates he doesn't get to have outside and the friends he's lost, and the way he's tied Phil to himself, an irreversible partnership.

Phil reassures him, tells him he's unique and powerful, fucks him slow and then rolls away, leaving Dan in tears he doesn't understand.

He remembers red and white construction paper love and the taste of grape and the way it felt to be anonymous and uncomplicated. He wonders if surface love is better than this constant shifting ground beneath him. He remembers when he would feel the curve of a slender waist and bite down his moans so her parents wouldn't hear and still be home for dinner. 

But then he remembers kissing his lips numb in the snow, black fringe flopping back into starlit drifts. His birthday, when Phil bought him 6 separate presents like it was normal, biting his lips and bouncing, watching Dan so carefully for the changes in his face as he unwrapped. 

Shouting at Phil while they played mario kart and Phil just laughing breathlessly at him, taking his shit with grace and mild interest, staying moored through Dan's storm of competitiveness. Shouting at him for real when his dad told him he didn't think bisexuality was "worth pursuing" slamming their cupboards shut and telling Phil he wished he could quit, wished he had a girlfriend instead. 

Phil shouted back for the first time he could remember, lectured him about the ways he was proud. 

The times they wouldn't leave Phil's bed all day, the times Dan had to restrain himself from fixing Phil's hair, 100 shared meals, 1000 sloppily prepared cups of coffee, missing Phil before 24 hours had fully passed, hands feeling too open and empty.

The thing is, Dan is so good at wanting, and he always thought love was a blissful extension of that, all gratification and taking from another person.

Turns out love is fucking terrible, and it scrapes on the way down, forcing him into its borders. He hates it, hates that it hurts so completely. Other relationships fizzle out when he puts love first over and over, shouldering every complex twisting feeling and running with them, reaching for Phil and reaching and reaching so his bones reset for him.

Love is not want. But he has both, and they keep him balanced. Phil keeps him balanced - biting his lip and loving him back. Wanting him back. They hold each other up, precisely like house of cards engineering, talking out every second of their day and every slippery feeling. 

Knowing each other so well that other people find it hard to hold a conversation with the pair of them. Inside jokes become inside lives, and their relationship becomes this impossible, beautiful amalgamation of them both.

One day Dan realizes that he doesn't remember what he spent his time caring about before he had proper love. He thinks maybe he was permanently bored, permanently chasing want and giving in to the smiles of strangers. 

Phil snorts a little in his sleep, and laughs with his whole face and shoulders, and makes rubbish puns to cheer people up, and Dan's chest aches. 

He tells him he loves him at least once a day, and he always, always means it.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated, in part, to commenters who were very kind and inspired me to write some more. :')


End file.
